Providing a platform for artists who face barriers to the art world

Emma Louvelle

The Double Headed Goatfish

Emma Louvelle is a South West based Double Headed Goat-fish, improviser, choreographer, dancer, collector and creator of images, objects and text.

Image from performance 'Dish-Schism'

Image from Echoes from a Lost Music

I was lucky enough to get to choreograph a piece for seven dancers for the composer Chris Best and his composition 'Echoes of a Lost Music', Chris played live on stage with the dancers. The music Chris created is heavily influenced by Physics and Mathematical principles, the building blocks of the universe and the building blocks of my choreography.

(I) sland

59.4cm x 84.1cm

A geographical, psychological, self portrait of where I currently find myself.

How many tend to Live

21.0 x 29.7cm

Go on....step outside

Bad Hair on a Rainy Day

21.0 x 29.7cm

You know that kind of day when everything just refuses to function.

A Doodle

21.0 x 29.7cm

A doodle after waking up from dream, a sort of visual dream diary entry. I have books upon books of doodles they seem to pour out of me all over the place and are carried out in the moment, they are never pre-planned.

What we Tuck Away

This is from a recent performance I did in a Victorian basement in Clapham Common. It was about those spaces in our homes where we keep things locked away, we want to hold onto them but we don't won't them on display. The stuff of basements, cupboards and attics. Our homes and our bodies can be viewed as metaphors for each other and it was this idea that I was playing with here.

Basophil

11.5 x 11.5 cm's

A Basophil is a white blood cell, a vital component of our body we do not see and one that is rarely thought of or mentioned. As an artist with a platter of mental health and learning differences issues, issues that cannot be seen, are often unconsidered and of the body I find a parallel of sorts. Increasingly my art is looking for the over-looked and the unseen. I have no idea what in reality a Basophil looks like but this sculpture is what is conjured to my minds eye when I read about it.

Pale.3

I'm the middle child of three girls. I'm not sure if I believe in birth order theories, generalisations always seemed flawed to me. Life tends to be way more complex that what can be summed up in some soundbite sentences. However whether birth order or the complicated circumstances of my childhood I grew up with a sense of not really being heard or seen. My behavior as I got older I sometimes feel was a cry of defiance, see me, hear me, I won't fade into the background and become pale.

Dancer Through a Glass 3

Dancer Through a Glass

I took this photo in a Frida Kahlo themed restaurant in Barcelona. The water glasses were these beautiful thick yellow glass and I put one up to my eyes to see what the world would look like. The result was a collection of portraits of the dancers I was dining with viewed through the glasses. I love finding the magic in the little everyday things that we tend to overlook.

Back of Beyond

42cm x 30cm

There was a sentence I read in an essay by the historian Ronald Grigor Suny which got lodged in my brain and was to ignite a train of thought within me. “Back and beyond are metaphors for movement through space and time.” This sentence suggested to me the possibility of investigating outside of the normal geographical context for the phrase. It occurred to me that the geographical scale normally associated with the “Back of Beyond” was generally grand and wide. Outer Mongolia, the Highlands of Scotland, mountainous, dessert scenes and crumbling buildings hidden upon moorland; where some of examples that whirled about my brain. But what if instead of looking at the saying through a telescope, you used a microscope instead? What then? What if instead of physical representations you looked at metaphysical ones?

Self Portrait 2014

26cm x 19cm

A spider builds a web to catch a fly but I am both spider and fly. Like many people with mental health issues I build a web around myself by my actions and thoughts. It's construction, intricate, strong, tailored by my personal measurements and present terrain are a beautiful trap. When ill I weave the bundle and then lie in the heart of it.

My Weeping Ears

self portrait 2015

54cm x 107.5cm

self portrait 2015

54cm x 107.5cm

self portrait 2015

54cm x 107.5cm

self portrait 2015

54cm x 107.5cm

Understanding the nature of my core illness, the extremes of my personality, the I can do everything to the I can do nothing has only occurred recently. Most of my life I've been one of these two extreme versions of myself, but now I'm learning the middle ground, the merge and acceptance. The wooden table/box is normally used to store sewing equipment, a place to store the tools of creation and repair; a box/body to hold it together. The design of the box, pulling out away from the center is how I've been, two light bulbs, two minds. For me blue is the colour of the psyche, the hue is rich and deep, there's something unreal about such a blue. The book is on mountain climbing, a book sawed in half is hard to use. I'm a Capricorn, both sun and moon, the mountain goat not the one in a field. I choose the rocks, the climb, the falls, the high's and the low's, but I need to put the book back together for a more smooth and successful navigation. To screw things down securely to connect my two parts so my future journey in life is a more steady guided affair.

My Weeping Ears

9.5cm x 12.5cm

I have a history of self harm and about a year ago my ears received the brunt of it. I would obsessively stick things into them and gauge, incense sticks, the handles on my glasses and cotton buds by the multitude. My ears were constantly getting infected oozing greenish liquid and goo and I walked around in a muffled audio world. One day I had enough and fought back. I'd woken up in the night due to ear ache, my pillow in the morning had seepage on it and my ear popped and squelched. I grabbed my ear buds and found myself binding them with dental floss, denying them access to my ears with material used to remove unwanted debris from our mouth. The creation of this work is a bit of a blur, but it's creation was an act of fighting back, a reclaiming and of acknowledgement of my actions.

PreviousNext

Comments

11/08/2018

emma louvelle

Dear Shelia

I forgot to say that I find Pale 3 quite difficult to look at.

Love & Respect

Emma

10/08/2018

emma louvelle

Dear Shelia

Thank you sooo much for such lovely comments and taking the time to write to me.

I do remember you from Bristol, your words to me then as now mean a lot

Thank you again

Emma

Oh who are you the mum of so I can check out their work?

04/08/2018

Sheila Fox

Hi Emma, I’m mum to one of the other alternative visions artists; I spoke to you at the Bristol private viewing and talked about how Back Of Beyond drew me in and made me feel intensely positive. I know it was a while ago now but the feeling I got from your painting remains the same and I wanted to tell you again.

Pale 3 made me cry... Sheila.

17/05/2018

Waltraud Pospischil

Dear Emma, it was awesome to meet you in Chichester and watch your presentation! Best wishes, Waltraud

07/05/2018

emma louvelle

Dear Drew

Keep in contact!

You are ace!

Love & Respect

Emma

07/05/2018

emma louvelle

Dear Mike

Thank you soooo.......much for your lovely words!

I will always be making work for me it is as essential as breathing.

Love & Respect

Emma

07/05/2018

Drew Fox

Mike Inglis

Hi Emma. I spoke to you very briefly today and you let me make a video portrait of you in the sunny courtyard. I just needed to tell you how absolutly beautiful your performance was today, exploring your relationship with art and your wellbeing; it moved me profoundly and I can not articulate with words how moving this performance was. Keep making work, you are very very talented.

All love

Mike

06/05/2018

john taylor

Thank you John

Your kind words are such an encouragement, I couldn't find you on here, so I hope you receive this message.

Love & peace

Emma Louvelle

20/08/2017

John Taylor

I am so pleased you are 'artist of the month'. I love 'Back of Beyond'. We met at the Bristol opening and exchanged a few encouraging words. Keep up the great and varied work and your infectious enthusiasm.

08/08/2017

Stephen Wey

Some powerful pieces - 'Back of Beyond' in particular speaks to me

11/01/2016

sandeep kumar mishra

Thanks a lot for encouraging words

04/12/2015

Sandeep Kumar Mishra

To be different is to be condemned OR appreciated by society' . Imagine feeling free to be who you are. Imagine having the freedom to act the way you wish. Imagine just being you. These might sound like simple enough imaginations because these are acts which we live out each day effortlessly. Simple enough for us, yet there are countless others who face difficulty in having the free will to freely express who they are. He is treated as if he is extremely strange and is disliked by the majority of the community. A person can be unique in one or more ways, however, he may still be treated differently than others.

BUT DARE TO BE DIFFERENT.BRAVE HEART CAN ONLY DO

09/11/2015

Steven Thomas

So many people who use this site write so eloquent and spellbinding descriptions that I find reading those sometimes just as entertaining as the art on display. I love the photographs through the glass, I love Back of Beyond and I love the rest too. Absolutely stunning body of work. Thanks.